This is my 8th year homeschooling.  The first 4 years I had no schedule and no checklist.  We just did work throughout the day and I prayed that we’d get it all done!  As we added more children to our lives, this didn’t work so well.

Then I discovered MOTH.  MOTH stands for Managers of Theirs Homes.  It’s a great product and can be found at www.titus2.com.  Steve and Terri Maxwell are a wonderful couple that offer some great resources.  For the next 3 years I would diligently sit down and make a schedule.  Every hour of our days were scheduled out.

One year I had short time periods for the different subjects.  Last year I had longer time periods and the kids were to read if they finished early.

I love the idea of a schedule.  I really do.  I would love to have my days planned out better.  To know that I have time for scrapbooking because I’ve scheduled it in.  To get enough sleep each night.  To have dinner on time.

It just doesn’t work for me.  I don’t even really know why.  I started saying that I was too random.  Life is too random.  The real reason is that I just don’t want to do math at 9am every morning.  Maybe I’m in the mood for history then.  Maybe the baby is crying and I need to nurse her and math would be a pain right then.  But I could read then.  Or…whatever.  Or maybe the meal I want to make for dinner takes more time than the 1 hour I had scheduled at 5pm.  Maybe I decide it’s time to make cinnamon rolls and we all stop school and enjoy that.

I trembled at the thought of not having a schedule.  Then I remembered that I only followed it for 3 weeks anyway and then would give up.  Why torture myself??

But how to make sure we were getting everything done in our day?

First I made a list of everything that we needed to do.  Then I thought about what would work best for mornings and what would be best for the afternoons (when the 3 little ones are napping).

And tada!  Here’s our checklist.  Each day we just make sure to do everything we need to do for that.  I didn’t X off the days we don’t actually do something.  For example, we only do BFIAR on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  But just in case I miss Monday…we can “catch up” on Tuesday.

I looked at my checklist today?  Everything is done for the week!!  Week 1 of school – SUCCESS!